“Smart Emission” project is a current research project executed by a consortium of Dutch knowledge institutes, government, (ICT- and sensor) companies together with citizens in the city of Nijmegen. The goal of this project is to monitor, visualize and communicate a real-time, fine-grained “environmental footprint” of the city. For that reason, an innovative set of low-cost outdoor sensors and a related Open Geo Data infrastructure were developed. Simultaneously, a participatory process is organized to collaborate with citizens and consortium professionals with the shared purpose of “collective sense-making”. The future vision is to combine bottom-up and top-down communication and governance for the purpose of increasing urban health. The project consortium aims to innovate and learn about low-cost sensors, shared citizen science in an urban setting, and Open Data applications through standardizing the data models and dataflow (according to Inspire and OGC standards).

Research questions:

Do low-cost sensors add to the fine-grained picture of air quality indicators?

Does the concept work?

Does sense-making with citizens work?

Does this open up opportunities for environmentally-informed city governance?

Reflective: (How) do roles of government and citizen change?

At this time, 34 sensors have been installed at people’s houses and gardens, and pilot-version portals for viewing data (called “viewers”) have been developed. The data streams are being calibrated and analysed- by citizens and professional analysts. Several “Smart Emission citizen participants” meetings have been held and several “use cases” have already been completed. The outcomes that are related with the reliability and the usefulness of the project are quite positive. While citizens and experts now have 24/7 data of their local environment in their own hands, the sensor network is still being improved and extended with more sensors. On October 3rd 2016, Smart Emission Project won the prize of the “Smartest Project 2016”.